


Reconstruction

by The_Buzz



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adventure, And character stuff, Angst, Bucky Barnes Angst, Civil War feels, Everyone Needs A Hug, Friendship, Gen, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Lots of Whump, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Civil War (Marvel), Rescue, Steve Rogers Angst, Tony Stark Angst, Torture, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2017-01-08
Packaged: 2018-09-13 08:00:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9114151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Buzz/pseuds/The_Buzz
Summary: When Steve is captured by Hydra and tortured, Tony and Bucky have to work together to save him. It goes about as well as could be expected.Based on the prompt:Post-Civil War, Tony and Bucky have to work together to save Steve from Hydra.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is finished and will be posted over the next week as I edit each chapter.
> 
> This fic was written for a Steve fan by a Tony fan, and I did my best to keep it "non-partisan" overall. Even though Tony is my favorite, I think they're all great characters and I can see where they're all coming from. That said, the narration is all POV-specific, and the characters have their own views on each other and everything that happened. So, be prepared.
> 
> Enjoy, and please leave a comment!

Tony sat in the cushy chair in the Avengers facility common area, swilling fine scotch in a tumbler and staring at an empty TV screen.

 _We all need family_. _The Avengers are yours._

Well, Cap hadn’t been wrong about the first part. It was only the second part, the part where the Avengers wanted anything to do with him at all, that was utter bullshit.

He drained his glass and poured another. Vision was off somewhere discovering humanity or something. Rhodey was still sleeping about 16 hours a day, when he wasn’t at physical therapy or trying out whatever new device Tony forced on him that week (he claimed he was grateful, but still. Tony knew what he was doing). That left… no one. Bruce was in the wind, had been for years. Pepper was gone.

That last glass of scotch was gone too, and Tony looked into the cup, a little bemused. It didn’t really make him feel _better_ , per se, but it was—

His phone was ringing.

He let his last train of thought dissipate (dwelling on his feelings was never good, had never been good, but was especially not good now). He fumbled for his phone, because there were so damn few people who would call him on _this_ phone, his personal phone, that it had to be something important. (Not like anyone would call just to say hi, or ask how he was dealing with the crushing loneliness and guilt.) Dusk had fallen since he’d settled into the chair and he squinted at the StarkPhone’s too-bright screen.

Withheld.

Weird. Nobody had this number except Vision and Rhodey and Pepper and… and Steve.  

At some point, his heart had started pounding in his chest, beating against the scar tissue where the arc reactor used to be.

He thumbed the icon to pick up, barely daring to breathe. There was no picture but the voice came through clear.

“Stark?”

It wasn’t Steve’s voice. Tony shifted in his seat and tried to pretend to himself that a devastating sense of disappointment hadn’t just descended over him. He was drunk enough that he could almost do it.

“Who’s this?” he returned in a sharp voice. The voice sounded extremely familiar, and kicked up a wave of anxiety he didn’t entirely understand, but he didn’t recognize it at first.

“Bucky.”

“Bucky,” Tony repeated, because maybe he’d lost his mind after all, or someone had slipped something in his scotch and now he was having wacky hallucinations. It was Bucky, Bucky who had killed his parents, Bucky who Tony had tried to murder in cold blood just two months ago. Of course it was Bucky.

“Yeah. I need your help.”

Tony snorted. He started babbling before his brain had really caught up with the idea that Barnes was on the other end of the phone. “What’s this, a practical joke? Did Barton put you up to this? Nah, he hates my guts now, he only reserves practical joking for friends and acquaintances. Was it—”

“Shut up, Stark.”

Bucky’s tone was so flat and serious that Tony actually did as he was told. For a moment, because it was really all he could think, he considered interjecting, _I’m sorry I tried to kill you_.

Bucky went on, “I’m going to send you a file. Watch it.”

The holographic screen flared to light before he could protest. The picture was oddly grainy, like it had been shot by a security camera or something of the sort. At first it was too dim to make out the picture, but Tony’s gut clenched as the brightness rose and he could make out the outline of a familiar tall, muscular figure pressed against a wall, arms outstretched like they were being held up by chains. There was a hood over his face.

“Fuck,” Tony muttered.

Four blurry figures entered the frame. The man in chains—Steve, it was obviously Steve—bucked and tore at the chains, the muscles in his arms cording. It didn’t work. One of the figures slammed a heavy bat into his ribcage and he jerked violently. Silently, in bad black and white, each of the figures took turns laying down a beating, for what felt like hours thought it could only have been minutes, until even through the bad quality Tony could see bruises and blood covering his frien—covering Steve’s body. All throughout the beating Steve had remained taut, fists clenched above him.

The video cut out.

“You still there?” Tony asked Barnes hoarsely. He’d been able to hold his liquor pretty well since he was 15 but his stomach was roiling now.

 “Yes,” Bucky said.

“All right, then, why did you call _me_?” Tony asked, his mouth still moving too fast because this was too damn much to process and he was at least half a bottle deep at this point. “You’ve got a whole cadre of super friends living in a Wakandan mansion with you if the rumors are true. I must be bottom of your list, why did you call me?”

“Because I need your help,” Bucky said again, patient as only an ex-assassin can be. His tone was as unreadable. “The file is heavily encoded. King T’Challa tried breaking it. No one else has anything close to your technical skills and resources.” He paused a moment. “Will you help?”

“Of course,” Tony said, because really it should have been obvious. “For Cap? Yeah. Of course. I’ll get on it. Right away.”

“I’m coming to you,” Bucky said.

“To me,” Tony repeated, wondering vaguely if his spiked scotch was making him hallucinate again. “As in, to the Avengers facility in a country where you are probably a… triply wanted man, or something.”

“Yes,” Bucky said.

“Of course you are," Tony said. The thought of facing Barnes, in person, after what had gone down in Siberia made his balls want to shrivel up and return to his body, but for Steve, honestly, he would face a number of even more ball-shrivelingly terrifying things. When it came down to it, joining forces with the man he’d recently tried to murder for the mind-controlled killing of his own parents was really on the not-so-bad end of the list of things he would do for Steve.

“T’Challa thought the message came from the United States,” Bucky offered. “I don’t want you decrypting it, trying to do something on your own, and ruining everything while we're overseas.”

“Oh. Well. Okay. Makes sense then,” Tony said, but Bucky had already cut the connection.

-

Bucky arrived six hours later in what looked like a refurbished Quinjet. By that time, Tony was about sixteen cups of coffee deep into his efforts to crack the location the video had been sent from and making good progress.

He extracted himself from the holographic screen he’d been glued to and went to meet the man at the door leading to the helipad. He forced himself not to scuff his feet and stare at the floor like an awkward teen trying to ask someone to prom.

Bucky hopped out of the Quinjet, jaw set, long hair swinging around his face. His missing arm was obvious in the deflated sleeve of his coat, sending yet another jolt of guilt through Tony's gut.

“Uh, hi,” Tony said, giving him a small wave. 

“Have you found the location yet?” Bucky asked bluntly. Ever the conversationalist.

“No,” Tony admitted. “But I’m getting there. Hydra—you’re sure it’s Hydra, right? I’m, like, at least 98.9 percent sure it’s Hydra, anyway, based on the electronic signatures—they must have known I’d end up taking a crack at it. It’s got defenses that look like they were specifically designed to stop FRIDAY from getting in.”

“Get on with it then,” Bucky said stiffly.

“Uh, right now? Actually, I thought we should chat a while. Really get to know each other, you know, maybe make some daisy chains and talk about our feelings--does anyone even do daisy chains these days?” Tony said.

Barnes did not look amused. The wind cutting across the helipad (nothing like the wind at the top of the Tower where the old helipad had been, but strong enough) whipped his hair around his face dramatically, making him look perhaps even less amused than he would have otherwise. Or maybe not.

Tony hastily appended, “…and I’ve got FRIDAY running algorithms as we speak. Nothing for me to do at the moment.”

Bucky just pushed past him and walked through the open door into the compound.

Tony turned on his heel and followed him, muttering to himself, “Well, this is going to be fun.”

* * *

It was dark and chilly and Steve's body ached. His wrists were raw in the chains and the hot drip of blood down his raised arms was just persistent enough to be annoying despite the pain. His chest was a mess—broken ribs and deep bruises and long lacerations where the nails hammered through a two-by-four had torn into his skin. His right ankle was broken, a souvenir of his capture, which forced him to balance on his left leg to keep the pressure off his arms. He was thirsty.

None of it mattered, because his friends were in danger.

Hydra, in true supervillain-wannabe fashion, had told him some of their plan, after they’d chained him to the wall but before they’d beaten the stuffing out of him. A video that only Tony Stark could decrypt. A ruse to force Steve’s friends to come out of hiding and join forces to save him. It got a little fuzzier from there. But whether they were planning to bring them all down together, or use Stark to fracture the budding superhero community further, it wasn't clear.

“Or maybe,” the agent had told him in a smug German lilt, “We’re just going to blow them all up.”

Whatever the specifics, people that Steve cared about were in need of his help, and that meant he had to do something.

No. He was _going_ to do something. It didn’t matter that he was alone and injured and drugged with something that made his muscles weak—and meant that despite having been held for almost half a day, his ankle hadn’t started knitting back together.

He was going to save them.

* * *

Tony had done all he could. Well, that sounded dramatic. He’d put in place all of the decrypting algorithms that he needed to trace the source of the video, and unless something went wrong, that meant all there was to do was wait. For another two hours or so. With Barnes.

Not going to be awkward at all.

Of course, Bucky had already spent all of the last seventeen hours sitting about three feet away from Tony in a faux-relaxed slouch, watching him with a completely unreadable (aside from the fact that it was definitely Not Friendly) expression. But during those seventeen hours Tony had been extremely busy, checking and double-checking the code and trying out new decryption tactics and generally having enough on his mind to distract him from the one man in the world who seemed to have even less of a sense of humor than Steve.

“You, uh, hungry?” he asked Bucky. He’d ordered in Thai…at some point, but it had been light out then and it had been dark for a while, so he figured it had been several hours.

“Yes,” Bucky said.

Tony sighed at the monosyllabic response, already keying in an order into the Starkphone app. “Well, there’s nothing to do now but wait. I’m going to take a shower in my suite, which you are not invited to, but you are welcome—nay, encouraged—to go to your own suite and do the same.” He’d had FRIDAY set up a guest suite for the former assassin as soon as he’d hung up the night before. "Pizza'll be here soon."

“I’ll stay here,” Barnes grunted, indicating the console Tony was abandoning with a jerk of his chin.

It occurred to Tony for the first time that maybe he wasn’t being an absurd shadow to Tony because he didn’t trust him to stay on task, or to inform him when he finally cracked the encryption, or because he thought Tony would stab him as soon as he had his back turned. It had to be that Bucky didn’t want to miss the moment when Steve’s location finally popped up.

Tony’s tone softened a little at the realization. “It’s not going to happen before the pizza gets here. I promise.”

Bucky’s eyes were steely. As usual. “You don’t know everything.”

It was something about the way he said it, little knowing curl of his lips, the slight smugness to his tone, that made every bit of sympathy Tony had started to feel freeze up in an instant, like it’d been dipped in liquid nitrogen. The words he’d shouted at Steve hadn’t stopped echoing through his head for weeks ( _Did you know? DID YOU KNOW?_ ) and here was Bucky telling him he didn’t _know_ anything.

He felt guilty for having snapped and gone after Bucky when he’d seen the video. He knew intellectually that Bucky had been under someone else’s control just as Barton had been under Loki’s control before New York. But that didn’t change the fact that it was his hands who had snuffed the life out of Howard and Maria Stark so many years ago, his hands that had sent Tony into an alcohol-fueled tailspin that nearly cost him the company he hadn’t even inherited yet and had let Obie step in and hey, look at that, another whole swathe of his life he had no desire to think about ever again. Fine. In his head he didn’t blame Bucky anymore, hadn’t really since he’d come home beaten and tired and finally slept long enough to realize he’d been acting exactly like the kind of revenge-crazed lunatics the Avengers were sworn to put down. But that didn’t change what had happened and he wasn't going to let himself be  _mocked_.

“Look,” Tony snapped at him, standing up because he hated that even sitting, Barnes towered over him. “I’m here because Steve needs me. Steve. You and I—we don't have to get along, as long as we get him back. But you do not get to talk to me like that.”

“Like what?” Bucky said, and it took everything Tony had to take a step back rather than forward to punch him in his smug face.

And then it occurred to him that maybe Bucky hadn’t meant anything by it, maybe it had been an innocuous bit of phrasing that Tony had interpreted wrongly because _he_ was wrapped up in his own problems and fears and pain. All Bucky had said was that he didn’t know everything, which was absolutely true in this case. Tony had heard the one word and assumed Bucky had gone in for the heart and reacted, without thinking, again.

"Pizza'll be here soon," Tony mumbled, spun around, and left. He turned the shower to boiling hot and stood under the spray, wondering how the fuck he was going to do this.

\-------------

Steve’s hands were numb. It wasn’t surprising, really, since they’d been chained above his head, suspending a part of his weight, for more than a day now. Still, once the thought had occurred to him it was hard not to notice. His wrists, on the other hand, were raw and painful and sticky from the chains. The good news was that his healing factor seemed to be picking up again. The bruises on his chest were already turning yellow and green and the more minor cuts had already faded to white lines that would disappear before long. His ankle no longer ached as fiercely as it had, but it had never been set, and he had a sinking feeling that it was knitting back together crooked, his foot over-pronated so that the sole of his foot faced inward just a bit too much. It still hurt to put any weight on it and it would be a bitch (pardon his language) to reset later, but he was still in better shape than before. Of course, with the healing came ravenous hunger and an increasingly uncomfortable thirst, but it was a worthwhile tradeoff. Soon, he’d be ready to make his escape.

The leader of the Hydra cell who’d caught him was back. To gloat, of course.

“They’ll have found your location by now,” he said. Steve still didn’t know his name. It was driving him a little crazy at this point. The man had a long, pointed face and pale skin. Pointy Face, then. “Or perhaps it will take a few more minutes. I may have overestimated Stark’s abilities. He and your friends will all be on their way soon, I imagine.”

“And you think you stand a chance?” Steve asked. His mouth was so dry that it came out as more of a croak than anything.

“I think we are well-prepared for the Avengers’ assault on… well, that would be giving it away, wouldn’t it?” Pointy Face smirked.

“Where are you sending them,” Steve said in as commanding a voice as he could manage.

Pointy Face just kept smiling. “I should like you to ponder that question a little longer. To wonder what will become of them.”

Steve set his jaw and glared at him with all of the righteousness he could muster.

Unfazed, Pointy Face gestured for two hulking guards to step closer. “Of course, I can’t have you growing too strong while you wait,” he said. “My…associates here will see to it that you remain, how shall I say, malleable.”

One of the guards was holding a heavy bat. The other had a knife. Steve tried not to sag in disappointment—it would be far harder to escape and save his friends in time if he were given another beating like the last one.

But then, that was the point.

Pointy Face stepped back, a sadistic look of pleasure painting his face as Guard #1 smashed his bat directly into Steve’s damaged ribs. He screamed through clenched teeth at the loud pop of bone and panted through the pain—until the guard swung again, the bat hitting with a wet crunch and leaving a section of his bare chest horrifically concave. Steve suppressed a cry, and tasted blood on his lips. 

Then Guard #2 was beside Steve, his knife glinting in the dim overhead lights of the basement they were keeping him in. Even steeling himself for pain, he wasn’t prepared for the utter agony of the sharp blade driving into the meat of his bicep all the way up to the hilt. Then twisting. Steve screamed.

At least his hands were numb.

Still, with every cut and blow, he reminded himself of the only thing that mattered. Getting free, and making sure Hydra didn't hurt anyone else on his account. He just had to hold out and wait for his moment. It was all that mattered.


	2. Chapter 2

Bucky stared at the open pizza box, frustrated at his own indecision. All of the pieces were the same. They looked pretty good, actually, covered in some combination of sausage and vegetables that Bucky had never seen on a pizza before. It was times like these that he was sharply aware of how much had been stolen from him. How many years he’d spent traveling the world and leaving destruction in his path, or fleeing that same destruction, and he’d never actually ordered a pizza for himself. Never had the choice of which piece he wanted—the one with all the sausage or the one with the big knot in the crust? It made him freeze, as if he was waiting on orders, and he hated that. At least in Wakanda, T’Challas’s chefs made everything and divided it up onto plates.

“Any day now,” Stark said. He was standing behind Bucky with a plate in his hands, impatience personified. He probably thought Bucky was taking his time on purpose.

Finally he grabbed the piece with the big doughy knot and retreated from the box, his heart pumping. He hated that too.

Stark grabbed two pieces, without any apparent thought at all, and popped them into his plate. They were back to sitting beside the holographic monitor, waiting for the decryption. Stark had returned a few minutes earlier bearing the pizza, but hadn't made any mention at all of his hurried exit from the room. That was just as well. Bucky had no desire to deal with the pain of a man who had let Steve down the way Tony had.

That was what it came down to, really. It didn't bother him so much that Stark had tried to kill him. He wasn't the first, and Bucky always found it hard to argue with them. But Steve - Steve deserved better.

Bucky settled in and took a bite of the pizza. It was good.

According to Stark, it would be another forty-five minutes before his algorithm revealed where the message had originated. Bucky didn’t trust him as far as…as far as Stark could throw _him_. Without the suit.

Stark nearly fell off his chair, pizza slice halfway to his mouth, when the monitor starting beeping. “What the—” He hastily set his food down on the plate and hovered over the hologram, the shock plain on his face.

“What is it?” Bucky asked.

“It’s done,” Stark said disbelievingly. “I’ve got an address. T’Challa was right—it’s in the U.S. Virginia, specifically. That’s it. We’ve got it!”

“That didn’t take 45 minutes,” Bucky felt compelled to point out.

The glare Stark gave him was only slightly tempered by his obvious relief. “Well, tell your super friends to get their asses over the Atlantic and back us up.” He made a complicated looking gesture with one hand and piece of Iron Man started flying over from across the lab and attaching to him, making Bucky jump like he’d been electrocuted. (He hated that, too.) “And suit up. Do you suit up, or is it strictly casual wear, with you? Whatever. We have to move.”

It might have been the first thing Stark had said that Bucky hadn’t disagreed with. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s move.”

* * *

The address belonged to a government facility of some kind, just outside of DC. Top secret—more than that, top secret enough that Tony couldn’t immediately hack into their servers to find out the floor plans or even what went on there. That meant deep, serious Hydra infiltration. It also meant that getting Rogers out was going to be a bitch. Their plan was to start with some recon, then, depending on the situation, either wait for reinforcements or handle the situation themselves. Tony was always a fan of the latter.

Tony was riding in the ‘jet, his armor already on. He could have flown alongside—and considering that Bucky was his only company, would probably have been a more enjoyable ride—but something had been niggling at him that he needed both hands for. So he let Bucky pilot the ‘jet and hunched over a StarkPad.

They’d been in their air maybe thirty minutes when Tony said, “Shit.”

“What?” Bucky asked in his usual monotone.

“I knew there was something weird about that. I knew it,” Tony said.

“ _What_ ,” Bucky growled again.

“My timing was off. In decrypting the file. ,” Tony said. “My timing is never off. Turns out it _wasn’t_ a mistake on my part. Of course. There were layers to the deception, one location they wanted me to decode, and one they didn’t. Guess which one is which.”

“We’re heading the wrong way,” Bucky interpreted.

“Yep,” Tony said, popping the _p_. “I’m patching the right coordinates in now. It looks like… we should be heading toward Arizona instead. Middle of nowhere desert as far as I can tell.”

A few minutes of Barnes' glowering and punching in coordinates later they were heading in the right direction. They’d sent along the information to the others flying in from Wakanda, but communications between ‘jets were worse than spotty over those distances. They’d have to hope for the best.

Worse, what would have been a quick, forty minute hop from New York to northern Virginia in the ‘jet would now be about two hours. Still better than flying commercial, or even flying his own private jet, but not damn well fast enough. They hadn’t received any new communications from Hydra but Tony would bet his garage Cap wasn’t being treated well.

Tony tried not to reflect too much on the irony that the last he’d seen Steve, _he’d_ been the one trying to do the damage. It seemed like ages ago and at the same time he could still feel the reverberation of the shield against his armor. It was surreal, really. The whole thing had been a clusterfuck from the beginning. Usually Tony was good at picking out the exact point things had started going wrong because of him, but in this case… he just didn’t know. It hadn’t been wrong to support the accords. And each step he’d taken had been absolutely necessary, at the time, as the situation had spun further and further out of control. Well, up until the end. It might not’ve been the first mental breakdown he’d had, but it was certainly the most violent. 

“We would have attacked a government facility,” Bucky said.

“Wha?” Tony said dumbly, blinking to return his focus to the here and now.

“If we’d gone to the original coordinates. They wanted us to attack the government,” Bucky said. "Wouldn't have gone well for any of us."

It was, possibly, the longest string of words he’d said to Tony yet.

“Smart,” Tony commented, thinking it through. “You and the rest of the team are already fugitives, you’d have your asses stuffed back in prison the second you set foot there, with no Cap to bail you out this time. And me, well, what better way to discredit me than have me helping you do it? If they're gunning for the Avengers, well, it might've worked.”

“It’s a good thing you noticed,” Bucky said.

Tony stared at him, a smirk growing on his face. “A good thing? You thought I did a good thing? Wow. I think we’re bonding. I’m choking up a little.”

 “Shut up,” Bucky said.

Tony did.

They lapsed back into silence, Tony alternating between triple-checking his work on the StarkPad and watching Bucky, who was staring out the front windshield with a mournful expression. He’d tied his sleeve under the stump of his metal arm, and Tony had a strange urge to ask him about it—did it hurt? Did it feel like anything at all? How had he controlled the prosthesis before and did it feel like there was something missing now?

He didn’t. He turned back to the StarkPad and checked the time. They’d been in the air for an hour now, which meant…one more to go. His nerves were jittering. At least when he flew the suit to a location his pre-fight adrenaline had something better to do that make him tap his fingers incessantly on the armrest.

Barnes shot him a glare and he stilled. To his surprise, however, Bucky didn't admonish him for the noise.

“Can I ask you a question?” Bucky asked instead.

As with any other time he spoke, it came out sounding abrupt and almost unplanned. Like he’d had no intention to speak to Tony but against his better judgment it had happened anyway.

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Tony said, still anxious. He wondered for a brief, irrational moment if Bucky was going to ask _him_ about the arm.

 “What was your... relationship... with Steve?"

Tony blinked. "My relationship."

"Yes," Bucky said stiffly. "Were you. Together. Before the accords."

Tony stared at him, aware that his mouth was slightly open but too shocked to do anything about it. He laughed. “Together…together?”

“Yes,” Bucky said, looking at the floor. There was almost—almost—a flush to his cheeks. “I saw it in a magazine while I was on the run. It said that the two of you—that you—you know.”

He sounded so flustered that Tony couldn’t suppress the nervous giggle that climbed up his throat. “Uh, no,” he said. “That was a tabloid. I remember that, actually, the paparazzi caught a picture of us standing close together at a gala and splashed it all over. But, ah, no. Ha! Not at all. Never. Anyway, Thor’s obviously the better catch.” He couldn’t stop laughing.

Until he realized that utter relief had washed over Bucky’s face.

“Oh no,” Tony said. “You?” It would make a little sense, anyway, why Cap had been so gung ho about going after Bucky even if that meant flouting the law. And why he'd always gotten that sad, faraway look in his eyes anytime the lost Winter Soldier had been mentioned.

Bucky’s eyes widened slightly, though the rest of his face didn't change. “No. Not like that. He’s my friend. Since we were kids.”

“Well, he’s my friend too,” Tony said, then amended, “was my friend. Well. Maybe we’ll get there again. He sent me a letter, you know.”

“I know.”

They looked at each other for several moments, something almost like understanding passing between them for the first time. It was funny, really, but there was something else there—a depth of feeling, maybe you could call it—that made it plausible enough. Bucky obviously loved Steve, whatever form it took. And so did he. Tony let his chin tilt toward his chest and shook his head. “God. We gotta get him back, don’t we.”

“Yeah,” Bucky said. “We do.”

* * *

The coordinates Stark had pulled from the video led them to a remote stretch of Arizona desert, rocky and ridged in the distance by low mountains. There was nothing immediately obvious from the surface, but the ‘jet’s scanners—supplemented by Iron Man’s—told them that there was a vast facility underground.

They touched down about half a mile out to minimize their chances of being detected by the base. Bucky checked his arsenal (more necessary to carry now than it had been before the fight with Stark) and prepared himself the mission. With the others still en route, possibly to the wrong location, he didn’t expect it to take long before they were fully on the offensive.

At least, Bucky reflected, that was one more thing that he and Stark agreed on. Neither of them wanted to wait around.

The entrance to the base was a set of doors encased in concrete and half-hidden by a rock formation. Iron Man fried the locking mechanism with a beam from his wrist in a second and disappeared into the staircase. Bucky jumped after him. For a brief moment, he flashed back to the Howling Commando days, and a dozen missions that had begun this way, sneaking together into dingy enemy installments...except it had always been Steve in the lead, Steve he'd followed. He forced the memory away. There was no point in thinking of the past.

They were in a small, cramped staircase, the dry Arizona heat dissipating quickly as they moved underground. Iron Man moved forward, hovering just above the staircase. Bucky followed, silent as a cat, ready to shoot anything that moved. It was dark and stuffy and the concrete stairs were chipped, like they were old.

Something wasn’t right.

Something wasn’t right.

He didn’t know what, but Bucky's senses were well enough tuned to anger that he didn't have to.

“Stark,” he said.

Stark, already several yards ahead of him, turned around—

And then everything went to hell. It started as a spark of brightness from down below, which quickly burgeoned into a fireball and Bucky had a millisecond to think— _BOMB!—_ before the heat and force enveloped them on all sides and then the force and brilliance disappeared into pain and darkness and nothing.

* * *

Steve felt the foundation shake. However deep in the compound it he was, it was subtle, but it dislodged dust from the ceiling above. It rained down on him for a few seconds before his sluggish, pained mind realized what had happened.

Something had exploded nearby.

He twisted in his chains, uncaring that the metal bit into his skin, or that his chest was a mess of bone shards and pain that seized every time he shifted an inch. It didn’t matter. His captor’s words echoed in his mind.

_Or maybe we’re just going to blow them all up._

His friends had must have come for him, and gotten caught in the blast. They could be dead or injured and in need of help. He had to do _something_. He wrapped his fingers around the chains and pulled.

“Gaaahhhh!”

The noise tore out of him like it had a mind of its own. The chains creaked against the moorings in the concrete ceiling, shaking loose more dust. Blood burbled up in his throat as he gasped against the pain, coating his mouth with a metallic tang. He kept pulling. His arms were shaking, pain radiating from a dozen stab wounds and cracked bones and God knew what else. It didn’t matter. He had to get free. He had to help his friends. He hadn’t had the strength before but now—he _had to do it—_ he _had to—_

The first chain came free with a mighty jerk, breaking free from its housing in a shower of dust and concrete chunks. Steve cried out as all of his weight transferred to his other arm, pulling abruptly on his torn and battered joints. He wrapped his freed hand (no longer so numb as fiery pins and needles slammed through it) around the chain holding his other arm and used all of his weight to heave on it.

The second chain snapped free of its mooring in the concrete ceiling and Steve collapsed to the floor, scuffing his knees and palms on the concrete. The chains and manacles were still attached to his wrists but he was free, at least. He forced himself to stagger up, ignoring the shards of agony pulsing through his chest and his badly-healed ankle. He wrapped the chains around his hands, leaving the long ends free like twin whips—they were the best weapons he had for the moment—and limped forward. His bad ankle shook and shot agony through his leg but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

Steve was going to save his friends.


	3. Chapter 3

The Iron Man suit was strong enough to withstand an impressive amount of force, heat, and pressure. What it wasn’t meant for was to take was a bomb blowing up almost literally in his face and dumping half a ton of concrete rubble on top of him. Tony groaned softly, trying to make sense of the red alarms flashing all across the HUD while simultaneously taking stock of the damage the analog way. He was lying face down, his faceplate smashed into the rubble beneath him.

He could move a little—that was a good sign. Only a little, though, because a huge slab of concrete from their stairwell ceiling was lying across him. The HUD reported damage to the plating on his back and chest (consistent with the constriction in his chest and the growing ache of damaged ribs). His arms were outstretched in front of him, free of the slab, from when he’d reached out instinctively to break his fall when he’d gone flying. His legs—not so free. He wriggled, trying to pull free of the slab without dislodging anything else, and stopped with a bit-off “ _Fuck!_ ” when everything from his right knee down exploded in pain. Sure enough, the HUD was flashing loudly about that too. Armor breach. A corner of the slab had hit his right calf with all the force of, well, a giant piece of concrete propelled by a bomb, and severely dented the armor and broken his leg with the shattering force of it.

Well, shit. He’d just have to work around that. He took as deep a breath as he could and put his options in order.

First. He had to get free from the slab that was still pressing down on his back and digging into his right calf. Couldn’t do anything else until he did that.

Second. Had to find Barnes. Any normal person would’ve been killed but he knew that Winter Soldier was made of sturdier stuff, like Cap himself. He’d also been several yards behind Tony, and so a little closer to the surface and further from the bomb.

Tony planted his arms under him, using the armor’s strength to raise his torso. It strained and the HUD flashed a few more warnings, but he managed to make some room. Unfortunately shifting the slab only dug it into his leg further and for a few seconds the pain stole his breath away. He managed to get his unhurt leg under him too, so he was on hands and one knee with the slab on his back, pinning one leg. Now it was just a matter of throwing it off.

He gritted his teeth and fired his repulsors at the ground. For an interminable second there was force but he wasn’t moving, all the resistance centered on his leg and he screamed—and then it was enough and he popped free of the cement, nearly crashing into the adjacent wall.

“Ow, ow, shit, fuck, ow,” he muttered, spinning around and trying to think past the throbbing agony in his lower leg. Locking what remained of the armor into a makeshift splint helped a little.

Step one, complete.

Step two. That was Barnes. He flicked away the warnings on his HUD and turned on the sensors. About half of them were malfunctioning but he immediately picked up a life sign several yards away.

Bucky had gotten lucky, then—he’d been thrown up and out of the staircase. So far, so good. His boot repulsor was malfunctioning so he limped over to the life sign and stumbled to his knees beside Barnes’ prone body. Bucky was unconscious, blood from a gash in his temple trailing down his face and matting his hair. His clothes were torn and every inch of exposed skin was scratched or bruised and—God—a piece of rebar was sticking up through the small of his back.

Tony gripped his shoulder and shook him gently, half expecting him to die right in front of him. Instead he jerked into awareness (thanks, whatever super soldier serum variant made that possible) and immediately grabbed for Tony’s throat.

“Whoa, hey, hey!” Tony said, pulling back. He retracted the faceplate so Bucky could see what he was grabbing at, not that Bucky would probably be any happier to see _him_ than the Iron Man mask.

Bucky let go of him, blinking several times as awareness returned. Then he grimaced, feeling where the rebar was sticking through him. His fingers came away bloody.

“Help me up,” he gritted at Tony.

“Are you sure?” Tony asked, because, well, rebar.

Bucky gave him a scathing look and started pushing himself up, his torso moving slowly up along the length of the rebar, leading a blood-slicked length behind. His expression, strained but determined, barely changed despite what had to be unimaginable pain. Horrified, Tony moved in and helped him the rest of the way up.

Soon, they were both standing shakily, looking down at rubble-filled hole where the stairs had been. Bucky’s gut and back were bleeding down his shirt but he barely seemed to pay it any mind. His eyes were slightly unfocused. Though he’d lost the gun he’d been packing on his way in, he’d pulled another one out of…somewhere.

"Are you all right?" Tony asked him, fully aware it was a silly question.

"Yeah," Barnes grunted. "You?"

"Yeah," Tony lied.

For a moment they sat there, looking each other over.

“We have to find another way in,” Bucky said.

“You think?” Tony said. He felt, for about half a second, an absurd desire to giggle. God, his leg hurt. And it was just starting to occur to him that they’d truly been played. 

The one thing working in their favor was that Hydra had obviously wanted them to storm the facility in Virginia, likely making the bomb a backup option. That might explain why there weren’t Hydra agents swarming them now. Maybe the base was understaffed, or they were relying on the bomb to have killed him. Certainly, if they’d moved a little faster and been deeper into the stairway, it would have.

“A way in. Yeah,” Tony said.

“What kind of artillery do you have in that suit?” Bucky asked.

“Uh…” Tony said, flicking his eyes to check the flashing warnings again. “I got a couple shoulder rockets functioning. You thinking what I’m thinking?”

“I think we can blast our way in,” Bucky said.

“Worth a shot,” Tony said.

They limped forward together, Tony’s shin supported but just barely by the remains of his armor, Bucky stiff on the side that had been impaled by the rebar. (It was still bleeding, a fact that Tony elected not to mention.)

The stairway was little more than a hole in the ground now, but it had to lead to an access point of some kind. The first shoulder missile put a dent in the rubble that had collected near the surface. The next one widened the passage considerably. Two more and most of the collapsed concrete and earth that was barring their way had vaporized. There were still chunks of concrete and earth to move out of the way, but—hard as that would be, given their injuries—they had a way in.

Bucky stood off to the side, half a smirk on his pale, dirty face. “Not bad, Stark.”

Tony pulled his faceplate up, then grinned despite the pain. “Are we bonding yet? I think we’re bonding.”

“Shut up,” Bucky said.

He did, but he didn’t stop grinning.

* * *

Steve didn’t get far. He staggered into the hallway, dragging the chains still attached to his wrists, and caught himself with one shoulder on the wall when his bad leg almost folded. He gritted his teeth and forced himself up, a singular thought forcing him onward. His friends. He had to save his friends.

One step at a time. One foot in front of the other. Ignore the pain in his chest. Ignore the pain in his ribs. Take another step. Save his friends.

Had he been a little sharper, he probably would have heard the Hydra agents coming before he nearly walked headfirst into the barrel of a loaded gun. Dizzy and distracted by pain as he was, it caught him by surprise.

Pulling back, he lashed out with the chain on his right hand, catching the Hydra agent in front of him with its length and knocking him into the wall. There were more behind that one, though, and the first deafening shot that rang out sent fiery pain lancing through his thigh. Even as he dropped to one knee—his leg collapsing under him—he swung the length of chain again and caught another guard around the neck, dragging her down, then lashed out with his fist to smack one back into another. Another bullet slammed through his shoulder—perhaps they were trying not to kill him—and he felt the bone shatter, making his left arm swing uselessly by his side. He forced himself to stagger up, and to keep swinging ( _I can do this all day_ ) but there were too many to fight like this, and before long they’d surrounded him and all it took was one solid blow to the back of his head to make him tilt over, stars cascading over his vision.

They handcuffed him roughly, indifferent to the damage to his shoulder, and threw him down face first on the ground.

“Get him chained up again,” came a familiar German lilt. Pointy Face.

Steve moaned and tried to push himself up, but his face was pressed into the cool, dirty cement of the floor and he couldn’t seem to find the strength. Was there a boot on his back? Maybe. He felt a little like he was going to be sick and a lot like he was going to pass out. Sensations he’d been used to once upon a time, but now they spelled trouble.

“And do it right this time,” Pointy Face was saying. “Captain Rogers must pay for his insurrection.”

Steve tried to mutter something, some promise that they wouldn’t keep him down and that they’d never take his friends while he was still breathing, but then the butt of another gun smashed into the back of his skull and everything receded into darkness.

* * *

Clearing Stark’s tunnel of remaining rubble was hard work, injured as he was, but Bucky threw himself into it without complaint. According to Stark’s sensors, there was an entranceway a few feet beyond the pile of cement chunks and rock and dirt that Iron Man’s rockets’ had left behind. What lay behind that, they still didn’t know.

That was fine. It meant Bucky had one job to focus on, and he was going to do it. Clear the rubble, get inside.

As he bent over and wrapped his arm around a boulder and heaved it up, grunting as the wound in his side gave a vicious throb, he reflected that having two arms would have made things a lot easier. Not having a concussion also probably would have been useful, since it was making him dizzy every time he straightened up. But hey. Bucky had learned the hard way, many times over, that you had to work with what you had.

He plodded toward the light at the other end of the tunnel and set the concrete down on a pile with a loud crack.

To his surprise, Stark was also clearing rubble with efficient purpose. From what little contact they’d had, Bucky had pegged Stark as a selfish man, one who would easily let his own needs and desires get subsume the needs of others. After all, what had his frenzy of rage in Siberia been if not that? (However deserved it might have been--but that, as always, was a thought for another day.) He’d also heard plenty of rumors circulating about the Avengers during his time on the run. Steve Rogers, anyone would tell you, was everything Captain America should be, brave and strong and true and all that. Tony Stark, well... they said that Stark only fought for himself, for glory or fame or fun. And for all Steve had expressed regret at how things with Stark had ended, Bucky had seen little that gave him reason to believe otherwise. Well, until now. There was no glory in this, no public waiting to shower him with adulation. Certainly, no fun. Bucky wasn’t sure what was wrong with Stark’s leg, exactly, but Bucky knew pain when he saw it, in the way Stark was favoring it—keeping all his weight on his left leg when he could, limping, stopping to catch himself on the tunnel wall once or twice. Getting to Steve was clearly agony but he was doing it with as much purpose as Bucky himself. 

“Stand back,” Stark said.

Bucky looked at him blankly, his concussed brain a little slower on the uptake than usual. “Why?”

He could practically feel Stark’s annoyance radiating even through Iron Man’s face plate. “I think we’re close enough to the interior of the base now that I can blast my way in with repulsor power. _Stand back_.”

Pressing a hand to his side, which was still searing relentlessly, Bucky took several steps back and waited.

Stark squared his feet as best he could, outstretched one hand, and fired. There was a loud _boom_ as the repulsor slammed through the concrete and rubble between them and the entrance. When the dust cleared, Stark was standing in front of a large hole leading into a dim, dingy hallway.

“Bingo,” Stark said quietly.

Bucky had about half a second to feel like they were finally getting somewhere before the click-click-click of safeties going off sounded from either side of the hole. An instant later they were staring down at the barrels of a dozen semiautomatics.


	4. Chapter 4

Steve returned to consciousness slowly. He felt numb, and distant, like everything around him had a strange, fuzzy quality. For several, horrifying seconds, he was sure he was trapped in the ice—the silence, the numbness, the disorientation, and he couldn’t move, it had to be!—but as he struggled feebly awareness of other sensations returned incrementally. His arms were stretched above him. He was deeply nauseous. And slowly but surely the numbness gave way to incredible pain.

One thing Steve had always prided himself on, even before the serum, had been his ability to take a beating and keep on going. No matter how weak, or small, or sickly he’d been, he’d never backed down from a fight, and over the course of the years that had amounted to a pretty impressive number of beatings. Compounded, often, by the way his own body’d betrayed him, the aches and pains and brittleness born of a dozen ailments.

Now, though, the agony was crushing beyond what he could remember from any fight, before or after the birth of Captain America. It rolled through him, wave after wave of unrelenting pain, to the point where he couldn’t even separate the injuries it was coming from. His chest was a broken mess. His head ached fiercely. His shattered, torn shoulder was an epicenter, the worst of the agony of his abused and arms, stretched painfully as they bore his weight. His legs burned and throbbed, the bullet wound and the poorly healed break competing for his ragged attention. The pain stole his breath and made it hard to think. Like one bad winter when a fever had taken him, making everything fuzzy, like the world was swimming and his thoughts were spun around. He remembered Bucky had stayed with him while his ma worked doubles to pay for the drugs.

Funny. He didn’t usually think of the old days so much. He felt a little like he had a fever now. Sweating despite the coolness of the underground air, his mouth parched, his stomach roiling. Maybe they’d drugged him again. Maybe not. Blood loss could also do odd things to a man.

Slowly, deliberately, with as much effort as he’d put into anything in his life, Steve put his good leg (relatively speaking, the one without the inflamed bullet hole still seeping red onto his uniform pants). His poorly healed ankle threatened to give out, but it held, and he was able to relax some of the weight from his destroyed shoulder. The pain receded a little bit. Not enough to fight his bonds, but enough.

Some clarity returned with that small amount of relief. With it came a nearly-overwhelming sense of dread. He’d failed. He hadn’t been able to get to his friends in time. They could be dead. _They were probably dead._

The door clicked open. The guards on either side of it—because they were waiting in here, now—moved aside to let Pointy Face in.

Steve lifted his chin and pressed his lips into a thin line, determined to appear stronger than he was.

The way Pointy Face smirked as he positioned himself in front of Steve, he wasn’t buying it.

“Ah, Captain,” he cooed. “How far, exactly, did you think you would get?”

Clenching his jaw, Steve glared at him and said nothing. It was harder to focus his eyes than he’d expected it to be.

“Your friends came to your rescue,” Pointy Face said. “Rather, they attempted to come to your rescue. They were both caught by the explosion, which I am sure you heard.”

“Who,” Steve said thickly, the word sticking in his dry throat. Not even the strongest of his friends could walk away unscathed from a bomb, and Steve had seen enough men torn apart by them during the War to know exactly how gruesome it could be.

“That is for me to know and you to wonder, isn’t it?” Pointy Face said. “I imagine that must hurt worst of all.”

“What happened to them,” Steve gritted. He tried to pull against his chains but the pain that erupted in his shattered shoulder and chest almost sent his vision skittering into darkness again. He gasped and managed to hold on to consciousness.

Pointy Face clicked his tongue. “That is also for me to know, and you to wonder. Did they both die in the blast? Are they my prisoners now, with no recourse? What a very good question.”

Steve closed his eyes, in part to block out Pointy Face’s smirking visage, and in part because he needed to think through the information point face had just (inadvertently?) provided. Did they _both_. So, two of his friends had been killed, or captured. Either way… either way Steve was helpless to save them. They were dead or they would be soon. 

Bucky would have come. With you ‘til the end of the line, that was what Bucky always said. After so long, he and Bucky were finally rekindling their friendship, and the thought of Bucky walking into a deadly trap to save him made Steve want to be sick. Bucky had already died for him once.

But who else? Sam, Natasha, Clint, Wanda? God, she was just a kid.

With that thought came the memory of sitting back in his chair, looking up at Tony and saying those same words. He’d wanted Steve to give him a break, and Steve hadn’t even considered giving it to him.

Pointy Face had said the trap was set for Stark. Chances were, it was him. It had to be. Somehow, that made it worse.

For days after their fight in Siberia Steve hadn’t been able to close his eyes without seeing the betrayal on Tony’s face. At first, he’d thought it deserved—Stark had been a fool to sign the accords, and had reacted to the video with a tantrum like a selfish child.  But as the weeks had passed, his anger had faded, only to be replaced with a wistful sense of regret. Stark had been in the wrong, certainly. But Steve of all people understood that grief could make a man do terrible things. In any case, one transgression wasn’t enough to negate all the good he’d done, or the friendship they’d developed over the years. It would take some more time, but Steve would have been willing to work to return to that place again. That was why he’d sent that letter. But now? Now, there would be no reconciliation, because Tony was going to die (had already died?) for him.

Steve could hear Pointy Face chuckling. 

The pain was near-unbearable again, seeming to reach new crescendos at random as he waited. Steve gritted his teeth and strained not to cry out, because now—now, when he had no other possible form of rebellion—he wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction.

Still, as he hung from his wrists, too weak to pull free, too weak to fight, Steve couldn’t help a wave of despair. He had joined the army, and volunteered for the serum, just so that he could be strong enough to protect people from the bullies of the world. And here he was, as weak and useless and pathetic as he’d ever been, and just as unable to protect the people he loved.

He could feel a prickle behind his eyes, and a pressure in his throat. It took him a moment to recognize it—it had been so long since he’d last cried. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter, but it didn’t stop a hot tear from escaping and trailing down his face.

“Punish him for his attempt to escape,” Pointy Face ordered the guards.

Though he knew the pain was coming, more than he could take, Steve found it hard to care. He’d failed his friends. That was all that mattered.

 

* * *

Tony reacted in an instant, throwing himself in front of Bucky and sweeping his repulsor in an arc to knock out as many of the Hydra goons as he could. Or rather, he would have, if throwing himself in front of Bucky didn’t mean landing with all of his weight on his bad leg, which immediately gave out with a fireball of pain centered right in the middle of his shin. His repulsor fire went wide, knocking out the first two Hydra soldiers but only clipping a third—and leaving three more completely unhindered. He landed awkwardly on his hands and knees with a strangled yell as gunfire erupted around them, clanging off his suit in all directions. 

He pushed himself up, sure it was too late—except Barnes was already leaping into the fray right over his hunched form. One of the soldiers dropped with a bullet to the head, another got the butt of Bucky’s gun, and the third went down hard as Bucky made a flying leap kick that ended right in the man’s solar plexus.

That left the solider Tony’d only clipped, who was staggering upright with a murderous expression, but Tony had recovered enough to calmly raise an arm and hit him with a repulsor blast right through the chest.

The hallway was suddenly very still, and very silent. Tony ignored the warnings flashing in red across his HUD—low power, poor arc reactor function, damage to hydraulic systems, it could all wait—and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet.

His leg held, but not by much. FRIDAY was still automatically tightening the panels on the leg to act as a splint, but that didn’t stop it from being agonizing. “Shit, shit, _shit_ ,” he muttered, squeezing his eyes shut until the pain receded enough for him to limp toward where Bucky’s flying kick had landed him.

The Winter Soldier was on his back on the floor, working to get his arm under him to press himself up.

“You all right?” Tony asked, extending a hand.

“Yeah,” Bucky grunted. He was bleeding anew from a deep gash on his shoulder, and was approaching milk-levels of pale, but he took Tony’s arm and let Tony heave him up.

“That was nice what you did there,” Tony said, his mouth running mostly because his mind was so occupied with his leg throbbing like a sonofabitch and the fact that they had to be close to Cap, now, if that was the welcoming committee. “Three guys with one firearm and one regular arm? I mean, I guess that’s two arms. Total. Maybe not so impressive, then.”

The blank look that Barnes gave him was enough to power down his mouth long enough for Barnes to say, “Do you have a read on Steve yet?”

“Ah. Getting there,” Tony said. He’d been running a sensor sweep since he’d picked Barnes up, but the low power and damage to his suit was making it slow going. Not to mention, it wasn’t like he had a Steve-finding mechanisms built in. The sensors were all for targeting arms (or finding people to rescue, he did that too), which meant they could pick up heat signatures but not much else.

He let out a low breath as the data started coming in, the points popping up like sprouting weeds across his HUD display. “Houston, we are not alone,” he said, then frowned slightly as he realized he’d butchered that expression. “Warm bodies all over the place. Within a hundred-yard radius there’s thirty-six distinct signals, and that isn’t the whole complex.”

“Tell me something useful,” Bucky gritted at him.

“More coming our way,” Tony said, watching a block of about ten heat signatures rounding a corner in their general direction.

“Then move,” Barnes said, pulling him in the opposite direction. Tony stumbled, clanking inelegantly as he righted himself.

As they hurried through the hall, both leaning on the other for support, he flicked through options in the HUD until he got it. Thanks to the serum, Steve ran hotter than most. That meant Tony could narrow the range of heat signatures picked up. FRIDAY complained (power at critical levels, damage to plating, _he knew that already thank you very much_ ), but soon the lights on the HUD were blinking out like stars going dark.

Until just one remained, pulsing at a steady 106.4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Which… probably wasn’t good, now that Tony thought about it, but at least they had a direction to go in.

“I’ve got him,” he said, pulling Bucky through an open doorway. He kept the one extreme heat signature on the HUD, labeling it in a bright blue, and allowed the others to repopulate the map. There was a lot of movement now, no doubt in search of the intruders. Probably hadn’t expected them to get this far.

Tony guided them through hallway after hallway, dodging guards where they could and blasting through them where they couldn’t. It was going surprisingly well, all things considering, and the pulsing blue light was only one turn away.

And then it went out.

And then all the lights went out, and giant words—POWER FAILURE—flashed up on the HUD. At the same time, the armor stiffened and slowed, no longer responding at all to his movements. It was little more than a shell—and a very heavy one at that.

“Why are you stopping?” Bucky said sharply, just before the weight of the armor made his knee buckle.

Tony reached up and flipped his faceplate manually. “Power’s out. Gotta get out of the armor.”

“This is not good timing,” Bucky told him.

Tony huffed and rolled his eyes like an irritated teenager. “You think? Cover me. I have to do it manually.”

The next ninety seconds or so, as he stripped off the armor, were some of the tensest Tony could remember. But none of the Hydra goons found them before Tony had removed the last piece—well, except for the inner boot plating that was holding his leg together—and stood up again, feeling disturbingly naked. Then he set the remaining pieces to self-destruct because God knew he wasn’t letting Hydra get its grubby mitts on it.

“He’s around the corner. Don’t need the HUD anymore,” he muttered at Bucky as soon as he was done, because that was what was important. Finding Steve and getting the fuck out of here.

Bucky nodded. “Lead the way.”

Tony stepped forward, trying to keep his face expressionless now that he didn’t have a faceplate to hide behind. Didn’t want Bucky knowing how much pain he was in. Not after…not after everything. He understood that they were united, if nothing else, by their desire to get Steve home safe and sound, but nothing would change the fact that Bucky was the man he’d tried to murder in a pain-fueled rage less than a month ago. It was a different kind of pain, now, but he still didn’t want the man to see how tenuously he was keeping it together. It wasn’t the first bone he’d broken but it was the first time he’d had to speedwalk through a den full of armed guards looking to kill him on a shattered leg held together by a few pieces of dented metal.

Nope, up and at ‘em, Stark men are made of iron, chin up kid, never let your enemies know you’re hurting. Listen to dear old dad. Made of iron. Stark men were made of iron. What he’d said before Barnes had cut his brake lines and hauled him out of the car and—nope, not going there again. Made of iron. He was fine.

He was so busy trying to distract himself with a medley of mantras that he didn’t know what to do when Bucky shoved a gun into Tony’s hand and wrapped his arm around his waist, taking some of his weight. Still half-replaying the video in his mind Tony recoiled.

“Cover me,” Bucky told him.

“Of course,” Tony said, because in the end, none of it made any different as long as they got Steve home.

They rounded the corner into more resistance. Firefights were, Tony had learned not so long ago, much more pants-shittingly terrifying when you weren’t encased in impenetrable gold-titanium alloy, and it was no less true now. The bullets zinged past him but he gave as good as he got, shoved against a wall while Bucky ninja-ed his way through the group.

A fierce pain erupted in Tony’s left arm and he looked down to see a neat hole in his undersuit, blood already starting to soak into his shirt sleeve. He ignored it as best he could and fired at the soldier who’d given it to him, but missed Bucky threw another soldier bodily into him, knocking them both into the wall and laying them out with a spray of his own bullets.

Several adrenaline-filled seconds later, it was quiet and still again aside from their heaving breath.

“All right?” Tony gasped at Bucky, as he had after each encounter with the guards. His arm was pounding in time with his pulse, but it at least had the side effect of dulling the pain in his leg, as his overworked pain receptors could only do so much.

“Yeah,” Bucky responded a breathlessly. He sounded a little unsure of himself, but they were close enough that Tony didn’t give it another thought. He pushed himself off the wall, transferring his weapon to his good hand, then started limping again toward Steve.

Bucky caught up to him moments later, still breathing hard.

“Thanks,” Tony said.

“For what?” Bucky said.

Tony shook his head—hopeless—and started limping forward again. Bucky didn’t return to help him walk, but looked even paler and more hunched over than before, so Tony didn’t press this issue. It was fine. They were almost there anyway—

It didn’t take much to break the lock on the door with a well-aimed bullet. They were expecting the two guards stationed on the inside and it didn’t take much to bring them down. Then, there was Cap.

“Oh, my God,” Tony said.

Bucky’s mouth was pressed in a tight line, and he didn’t say anything.

Steve was dangling from the ceiling by his wrists, his head lolling against his chest. There was no part of him that wasn’t covered in blood or deep bruising. One eye was swollen shut. His bare shoulder was a mangled, swollen mess, and it looked like someone had taken a bat to his midsection and never let up. One leg had a messy, inflamed bullet wound through the thigh and the other was twisted beneath him.

Suddenly, Tony’s own injuries didn’t seem so bad. He limped up to Steve and wrapped his arms around him as Bucky aimed for the chains holding him upright. Up close, Steve radiated feverish heat, and stank of sweat and blood. Tony held on for dear life.

Hadn’t been that long ago that he’d been the one trying to do the damage. Hadn’t been that long ago that Steve had been the one thing standing between him and taking Bucky’s head off with a repulsor shot. Funny, then, that he’d do anything to keep Cap alive and Bucky was the one person he was trusting to make that happen. Confusing, really. He hadn’t questioned the depth of his feeling then but he also knew without a doubt now that he’d die to make sure they got out of here alive.

Once the chains were broken Steve slumped bonelessly into Tony’s arms, nearly knocking him over. He managed to brace himself, gritting his teeth at the new strain on his leg. This was going to be difficult, especially if they couldn’t wake him up.

Bucky was already on it. “Steve,” he said, gently patting Steve’s swollen face. “Steve. Wake up. We have to go.”

At the sound of his voice, Steve gave a fitful groan and tried to move, which only unbalanced Tony more. Still, considering that dropping him into Tony’s arms (and all the pain that had to entail) hadn’t done it, Tony wasn’t about to complain.

“That’s right. Come on. Time to go home,” Bucky encouraged in a tone to soft and friendly and warm Tony almost couldn’t believe it had come from him.

Steve’s breath was quickening, and he clenched his teeth, though he was clearly still out of it. Tony shifted his weight slightly as he knee started shaking.

“Come on, Cap,” he encouraged. “Wakey wakey.”

Steve’s eyelids were fluttering now, the effort it was taking to pull himself from unconsciousness painfully clear.

“B—Bucky?” he muttered. “Did I get the flu again? Ma’s gonna be real worried.”

Tony glanced quickly at Bucky, surprised by the pain that flashed across it. “No, Steve. Not this time,” Bucky said softly. “You’re hurt badly. Come on. Can you stand up? We have to go.”

Steve blinked, his eyes focusing blearily on Bucky’s face. “Bucky,” he muttered again. His jaw clenched, as if a new wave of pain had just overtaken him. “I can… I can stand.” He didn’t sound too sure of it.

“Gotta hurry,” Tony told him.

Slowly, painfully, Steve started to straigten up. Bucky took his place on Steve’s other side, wrapping an arm around his waist. Steve gasped in pain at the new pressure. God. His ribs looked like hamburger meat.

Coordinating without words, Tony and Bucky led a stumbling Steve out into the hall, ignoring as best they could his gasps and grunts of pain. They were close. They were so close.

The hallway they’d originally come through was deserted, aside from the bodies of the Hydra soldiers they’d taken out. With his free arm, Tony kept Bucky’s weapon at the ready, but between trying to hold up Steve and willing his leg to hold just a little while longer, he was very aware he didn’t have much fight left in him.

He wished he still had the HUD to tell him where the soldiers were. He remembered the way out, no problem… but that wouldn’t matter much if they were overtaken.

Miraculously, they made it three quarters of the way without encountering any soldiers. Deciding that there was no point in worrying about jinxing anything at this point, Tony turned to comment to Barnes on their exceptional luck.

He was just in time to see Bucky’s eyes roll back in his head before the Winter Soldier collapsed. With no one to support his right side Steve immediately followed, Tony’s leg giving up under the added strain. They hit the ground together, Steve crying out in pain.

Tony pressed his eyes shut, frustrated at how close they were but also how far. “Well, fuck,” he muttered.

Several long seconds ticked by.

Weakly, and to his great surprise, Steve said beside him, “Tell me about it.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Tell me about it.”

Tony stared at Steve—just as weak and battered as before, though his non-swollen eye was open now and looking cogently at him—and had to fight down another absurd desire to chuckle. Of course Steve was awake now. Of course, when all hope was lost because Bucky was down and Tony was useless and they weren’t going to get Steve out of here even though they’d overcome every other obstacle, starting with getting along in the first place. Hell, he’d even begun to…well, not like the guy, but he could see how much Bucky cared for Cap, and he’d saved Tony’s life more than once. Hardly the ruthless killer he’d seen in the video, and who’d haunted his dreams for weeks (as murderer or victim). Didn’t want him dead. Except now, now they were done for because even with Cap awake there was no way the three of them were getting past the guards and making it out and to the repurposed Quinjet together.

The chuckle died an ignominious death in his throat.

Steve blinked at him a few times, still a bit disoriented perhaps, before his face pulled into a deep grimace. He shoved himself up ineffectually onto one elbow, looking over at Bucky. “What’s wrong with him?”

“Rebar,” Tony said, a small part of him relieved to be starting off with business. “And—shit.”

As they’d made the last leg of their journey through the halls, he’d been too wrapped up in finding Steve and managing his own pain to notice that Barnes had picked up two more holes in his torso. It was obvious now, though, the blood soaking through his black shirt from twin bullet holes in his right flank. He had seemed out of breath as they’d hurried toward Steve, but Tony hadn’t thought anything of it. And it wasn’t like Barnes had complained…

“He didn’t say anything,” Tony explained lamely.

“He needs help,” Steve said, completely disregarding both Tony’s explanation and the fact that he needed more help than anyone. Determination pinching his face, he pushed himself up further, moving as if to get his legs underneath him to stand.

“Hey. Whoa. What are you doing?” Tony said. It was surreal, really, after everything that had happened to be simultaneously awed and worried sick for him.

“Getting up,” Steve gritted. Sweat was beading on his forehead from the effort and he was breathing heavy but shallowly, almost hyperventilating as he fought for oxygen despite the damage to his chest and lungs. He’d already left a smear of red on the floor beneath him from the movement.

“I meant. Hold up. You’re in no condition to—”

“He needs help,” Steve ground out. He was barely on his hands and knees and already shaking. “I don’t… take orders… from you… Tony.”

Tony’s breath caught at the words, but now was hardly the time to get into what was left of their relationship, so he said, “My leg is broken. I can’t carry him, or you, out of here. You can’t move, and he can’t move. You notice how we have a problem here.”

“We’re…getting… out of here,” Steve said determinedly. He was on his knees now, using the wall to push himself up, and hell if Tony couldn’t see everything it was costing him. With a mighty effort and a muffled groan, Steve heaved himself to his feet, pressing his body into the wall in an effort to stay upright. His left leg, the one with the badly inflamed bullet hole, was trembling in big jerks. The other was planted at an awkward angle. His left arm was useless swinging by his side. His swollen, dirty face was twisted in pain. But he was standing.

Tony gaped at him for only a second. He had forgotten, in the weeks they’d been apart, just how damn inspiring Steve could be when he took that plucky determination to prevail against all physical odds and applied it to, well, anything. There was no part of Steve that wasn’t brutally injured, torn, or beaten, but there he was, standing up and doing what had to be done. It made Tony want to do the same.

He experienced an uninvited stab of the betrayal he’d felt in Siberia, because it wasn’t just anyone who had lied to him, it was Steve—good, true, honest Steve, who inspired every damn person who met him. He’d have expected it from someone like Natasha, who molded the truth to suit their needs, or even older friends like Rhodey who saw him as someone who needed protecting. But he’d honestly thought that Steve saw him as a friend and an equal, and he’d _trusted_ him. Their disagreement over the Accords had been just that, a disagreement, and Tony had hoped to resolve it with as little bloodshed as possible. He’d meant to all the way up until the video and then learning that Steve had known. That he’d known, but good honest Steve, who he’d have trusted with his life, hadn’t had the decency to tell him or thought he couldn’t handle the trust. Wallowing in his own loneliness and guilt for so long, he’d almost managed to forget how much that had hurt. Steve had been his friend. But maybe, he’d never been Steve’s.

Blinking the feelings away, Tony crawled over to Bucky and shook him by the shoulder, figuring that if he could get Bucky on his feet, however unsteady, it would at least solve one of their problems. Bucky remained still, his face roughly the color of the pale gray concrete he was resting on.

Tony sat back, frowning. His leg ached fiercely, stealing his concentration and his resolve. Steve was still towering over him.

“I’ll take him,” Steve said.

“No, you won’t,” Tony argued, because it was ridiculous to expect a man who could barely stay upright to carry someone else.

Steve must have interpreted it another way, though, because his face darkened. “I’m not leaving him here.”

Amazingly, for all of the emotions still warring inside him, the thought hadn’t even occurred to Tony. The accusation in Steve’s tone, however, made something acidic roil in his gut. But rather than point out to Steve what a team player he’d become, Tony said, “Don’t be an idiot. You can barely stand.”

“No other choice,” Steve said stubbornly. “Drug they gave me must be wearing off. I’m healing again.”

Which implied he hadn’t been before. Awesome.

Then he was kneeling beside Bucky, hooking one arm around him. “Help me get him across my shoulders,” he ordered Tony.

“Cap,” Tony started to argue, until it occurred to him that there really was no other option. And if it hurt a little more to see Steve putting so much care into saving Bucky yet again, when it was obvious Tony didn’t mean so much to him, he wasn’t going to say a word. Didn’t want to see him dead.

“Do it. Now.”

Tony looked into open, blue eye for a moment, then got to his knees. His shin screamed at him but he ignored it. He braced himself and helped Steve heave Bucky over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry.

The noise that Steve made when his friend’s weight settled onto his seeping, shattered shoulder was almost—almost—a scream. It came out through clenched teeth as a muffled, animal howl. Tony put a hand on Steve’s arm and kept it there until Steve rode out the pain.

Miraculously, Steve stayed upright. Then he stood. Staggered under Barnes’ weight, grunted in pain and caught himself on the wall, but stood.

Using the wall to steady himself, Tony pushed himself to his feet. Though the throbbing in his leg increased tenfold at the change in elevation, and his ribs pinged with pain at all the effort he’d just put them through, and there was no shaking the thought that Steve still didn’t give a damn about him, he felt almost giddy. They were doing it. They were moving and that meant they actually had a chance to get out. They were going to live.

They started forward, both moving clumsily. Tony’s leg had stiffened so that he could barely put weight on it at all, let alone help Steve carry Barnes. Considering that each step seemed to take a Herculean effort and Steve was staggering more than not, Tony cast about for other ways to keep him moving.

Unfortunately, he only had one idea.

“Rogers,” he said.

Steve grunted vaguely at him. _Go on_.

“Were we ever friends?”

Steve’s look of surprise, obvious even through the grimace he was wearing, almost made Tony snort with laughter.

“Or if that’s too hard. Are we friends now?”

“Tony… what are you doing,” Steve said raggedly. Tony hoped to god he was still healing, because the effort it was taking to keep going with Bucky slung over his shoulders was just plain hard to watch.

 “You said if I needed you, you’d be there,” Tony went on, letting his mouth run, needing to fill the silence with something Steve couldn’t tune out. “And a whole bunch of other sorry-not-sorry kind of stuff. But you never said we were friends and honestly I don’t know if we ever were.”

This time, Steve’s open eye flashed with something else. “Not—now—Tony,” Steve ground out.

“Not like we get much other quality time together, not that we ever did,” Tony said. He was trying for conversational but his voice came out pinched, both by the pain in his leg and the emotions he was stolidly trying to ignore.

“Does it matter?” Steve asked. _Matter_ came out as more of a grunt than anything as he visibly forced down a wave of pain.

“I guess not,” Tony muttered, not sure what response he’d been expecting.

“I said,” Steve ground out, “that I’d be there if you needed me. I meant it. And… here you are. For me. That’s… that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, teammates. But were we _friends_?” Tony asked.

Pain flashed over Steve’s face, though it could just have easily been from any of his myriad injuries. “I think…we…were,” he panted after a moment. “But I can’t just… Things are different. Now. You would have killed him.”

Tony focused, for a few moments, on just taking one step after another. Now it was flipped, the pain grounding him, distracting him from the conversation he’d meant as a distraction. He hadn’t really thought that saving Steve would make everything okay between them, but hearing it aloud... The disappointment welled up in him, making his throat tight. It made him forget their horrible chances of getting out of the base alive. It made him want a drink.

“I’m sorry, Tony,” Steve said, and sounded it.

The pain curdled suddenly to anger. “You got one thing wrong, you know,” Tony said bitterly. “The Avengers aren’t my family. They left me. They all left me for you. What was that—trying to rub it in?”

“Tony—” Steve said hoarsely, and Tony felt a brief flash of guilt at making him talk about this _now_. He sounded lost and young and hurt. And hell, he was all of that. 

“Forget it,” Tony said. “Let’s talk about something else. Barnes. We bonded, you know. Not going to say we’re besties, but… he’s got his shit. I’ve got mine.”

“Tony,” Steve said.

“And I know he's not a bad guy. Didn't think it would be possible, but here we are—"

“Tony!” Steve barked sharply, and this time Tony followed his line of sight to see shapes appearing around the corner.

“Fuck,” Tony said.

Hydra agents, at least a dozen, were moving toward them with guns raised. Tony raised his own weapon (Bucky’s weapon) but they were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Steve was stooping to put Bucky down, as if he was going to fight his way out of this, but Tony could only stare in stunned silence because it didn’t take a genius, which he was, to see that they weren’t all going to make it out.

But Steve was standing, slowly, and dropping into a fighting stance. As if he had a chance.

A dozen safeties went off at the same time.

“Freeze!” the head agent ordered.

Tony traded glances with Steve, then took aim at the lead Hydra agent, a sneering man with a pointed chin. “Get Barnes out of here,” Tony said. “I’ll hold them off.”

Steve glanced between him and Bucky’s motionless form pressed against the wall behind them. He was doing the math and coming to the exact same conclusion Tony had. They weren’t all getting out of here. But maybe, just maybe, two of them could.

“You sure?” Steve said.

“Yeah,” Tony said. It was easier than he thought it would be, except he was all alone in life now without a whole hell of a lot to live for, and for all their differences, he truly wanted Steve and Bucky to make it. Friends or not. “Yeah, now go!”

Steve dropped to his knees again and heaved Bucky onto his shoulders, groaning mightily as he straightened up. He turned back for just a moment, caught Tony’s eye, and said, “Thanks.”

Tony nodded and opened fire at the same time the Hydra soldiers did.

For seconds it was a cacophony, bullets exploding into the concrete all around him. His eyes slammed shut as fragments of concrete flew all around him and he pressed himself against the wall, firing a wide arc at agents clustered in front of him. If this wasn’t penance for what he’d done in Siberia, he didn’t know what was. Whether he deserved it or not.

Except… all of a sudden it had gone strangely quiet, and when he opened his eyes, a shimmering red force field was hanging in the air between him and the Hydra soldiers and an arrow had sprouted from the eye of the head Hydra agent with the pointy chin.

“Miss us?” Clint quipped from somewhere behind him.

“We got your message,” Sam said.

Tony spun around as best he could on his broken leg. They were all there, emerging from the hallway behind him. Clint, bow drawn, Wanda concentrating as she protected them from the rain of bullets, Sam supporting Steve, the ant guy—whatever his name was—carrying Bucky on his shoulders, and Natasha bringing up the rear.

And then his bad leg buckled and he was sliding to the floor in relief, shaking almost as hard as Steve had been.

* * *

Tony awoke in a hospital to a very strange sight. Steve and Bucky were both leaning over his bed, their faces creased in worry.  Tony blinked. Still there.

Steve looked considerably worse for the wear, every visible inch of skin not covered by flimsy hospital gown or bandage a bruise. His right eye was only half-open, his left arm was nested in a pale blue sling and he was sitting, Tony realized after a moment, in a wheelchair. His mouth was pressed tightly together but it looked more like pain than disapproval, and Tony remembered vaguely that his system couldn’t handle drugs of any kind. Poor bastard.

Bucky seemed a bit better off, though his face hadn’t lost its unnatural pallor and his chest was crisscrossed with bandages. He too wore a hospital gown, open in the front, and soft hospital pants.

“Uh… hi,” Tony croaked. His throat was dry and his mouth tasted weird, which probably meant he’d been out a while.

Steve offered him a cup of water with a straw and Tony took it gratefully and a little guiltily. Tony’s ribs protested as he reached for it and he winced.

Oddly enough, Steve and Bucky looked even more sympathetic.

“All right, what’s this about,” Tony said, starting to feel nervous. It had also just occurred to him that his dully-throbbing leg (the pain muted by plenty of good drugs) was completely immobilized in some sort of sling hanging from the ceiling, which meant that if they’d come to murder him or something, there weren’t a whole lot of places he could go.

“I—we—wanted to thank you,” Steve said openly.

 “You saved Steve. You saved me,” Bucky said.

“Yeah. Well,” Tony said. “Least I could do.” The words he’d wanted to say to Bucky when he’d first appeared at the empty Avengers compound came tumbling out, “I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”

Steve just looked at Bucky, who shrugged. “You’re not the first.”

Tony blinked a few times, totally nonplussed, for he’d been sure that Barnes’ initial hatred of him had stemmed from that. “Oh. Okay.”

“You saved Steve. You saved me,” Bucky said again. His tone suggested that he was in no way comfortable having this conversation, but was powering through it like an unwanted chore. “So. The way I see it...we’re even. Whatever that means.”

Tony stared at him a few more speechless seconds before mustering a nod and a, “You’re sure?”

“Yeah. Why not,” Bucky said, then gave Steve a—could it be?—meaningful glance. “I’m going to my room. I have a…” he gestured vaguely at his bandaged chest, “appointment.”

He turned without another word and left the room, still favoring one side.

As soon as the door had shut behind him, Tony asked Steve, “Did you know he was going to say all that?”

Steve shook his head. “I had no idea. But—I’m not surprised. I think he still blames himself for everything Hydra made him do. For everything else, too.”

“Hm,” Tony said, resting his head back against the cool pillow. “Can’t imagine what that’s like.”

Steve gave him the side-eye, as if he wasn’t sure if Tony’s last sentence had been sarcastic. Tony wasn’t totally sure himself.

Silence spread out between them for a few seconds. On the good drugs, it didn’t bother Tony as much as it usually did. His leg kept aching, but it was dulled like it belonged to someone else. Bucky had forgiven him, though Tony was still a little fuzzy on the why. Well, guilt, he understood. Caring about Steve, he understood too. But something else had shifted, too, during the long hours they’d spend on Cap’s trail. Somehow or another, he'd forgiven Bucky as well.

“About what I said back there,” Steve said finally, making Tony perk up, his swirling thoughts centering immediately on the man still at his bedside. “About us being friends.” Steve paused, wincing slightly, one hand ghosting over his damaged shoulder.

“About it?”

 At some point his heart had started pounding. It was stupid how much this meant to him.          

Clear blue eyes met his. “I meant what I said. We’re not friends, now,” Steve said, and it was only years of practice that let Tony keep his face neutral. His throat felt tight again.

“Thanks. Uh, for the update,” Tony said, suddenly wondering when his next shot of morphine would come and whether they’d knock him out indefinitely if he asked for it.

“That’s—not all,” Steve said, his gaze traveling to the floor. He fumbled for the words, reminding Tony that for all his acuity as a commander, he was still in many ways just an awkward kid. “We’re not friends now. But…I don’t think it has to stay that way. It means a lot to me that you came for me, and that you could set aside…everything to do it with Bucky. And that he could do the same with you. I guess what I’m saying is, we _were_ friends, Tony. I think I’d like to try again.”

And damned if Tony didn’t feel a small flutter of happiness at that. He forced a small smile. “I’d like that.”

Steve smiled back, not seeming to care that his split lip pulled apart.

Everything wasn’t okay. By Cap’s admission, they still weren’t friends. It might take time for Steve to forgive him from what he’d done (tried to do) in Siberia, and—truthfully—it was going to take time for Tony to forgive Steve, and to rebuild the confidence he’d once had in Steve. A not-so-small part of him wished that Steve would acknowledge he'd been in the wrong, too, beyond the _sorry your feelings were hurt_ kind of sentiment he'd put into the letter. Not to mention, the Avengers were still Steve’s, and not his, and that stung far more than Tony wanted to admit. It was far from a perfect situation.

But for the first time in weeks, Tony felt that maybe, just maybe, things were looking up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment - I love to hear what you think!

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Tumblr](http://starkly-tony.tumblr.com)!


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